As November and the presidential election continues to get closer, Vice President Kamala Harris is still leading in the polls. According to the latest average of national polls—collated by FiveThirtyEight—Harris has a 2.8-point lead over Trump.
According to The Independent, Redfield & Wilton Strategies reported that as recently as September 26, Harris is at 47 percent and Trump at 44 percent among a group of 2,500 adults.
Harris has been ahead in the polls for several weeks, but her supporters shouldn’t celebrate just yet.
The New York Times’s average of national polls has revealed that even though Harris is still ahead by just three points, the race remains very close in the seven key battleground states.
Still, neither candidate possesses a vital lead in states worth the 270 electoral votes needed to win. As The Root has previously reported, there remains some skepticism around the polls—especially when it comes to Black people as election polls have a history of miscounting the Black vote.
Former Harris aide and speechwriter Gevin Reynolds told The Root that we should still be concerned about the reality of the Vice President actually winning despite what the polls say.
“I’m not sure it’s fair to say the Vice President is ahead in this race. Sure, she’s ahead in some states in some polls. But other polls tell a different story,” Reynolds said.
“And if the polls end up being as wrong as they were in 2020, Donald Trump is going back to the White House. The Harris campaign knows all of this. VP Harris and Gov. Walz are zig-zagging the country to make their case to voters in the states that will decide this election.”
Reynolds sentiments echo the current state of Democrats who have become worried that pollsters are underestimating Donald Trump’s voter support, according to The Guardian. Both Hillary Clinton and President Biden were performing better against Trump in polling—both nationally and in swing states—than Harris is now.
He is not the only one who has questioned the validity of polling. In an exclusive interview with The Root, journalist Don Lemon said Americans have to to take the polls “with a grain of salt.” Lemon stated that “the polls said there was going to be a red wave over the last couple of elections, and that didn’t happen. It was the exact opposite.”
Lemon also said that “the polls said Hillary Clinton was going to win, and she did not.” During his street interview series in cities like Philadelphia, Atlantic City, and Chicago, Lemon learned that Black folks also may be dishonest about voting for Trump because of shame.
Black men also told Lemon that they were supporting Donald Trump because he gave them a $1,200 stimulus check when he was president, not seemingly understanding that it actually came from a Democratic Congress.
Harris may have the momentum she needs to capture the White House, but it would foolish to use the polls as the sole barometer for her tentative success.